


All You Sinners

by InsaneTrollLogic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e04 The End, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 14:52:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1351489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneTrollLogic/pseuds/InsaneTrollLogic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The past is miles of deserted highways and fields of fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All You Sinners

**Author's Note:**

> Orignally posted to LJ 10/4/2009

They start to break slowly, chipping away piece by piece to broken shards, too fragile to touch, too sharp to fix.  
  
The lasted longer then they should, Dean thinks.  
  
The past is miles of deserted highways and fields of fire. He can’t imagine tomorrow.  
  


***

  
  
Sam says yes in Detroit.  
  
Sam says yes and five states away a Dean knows it within seconds. Everyone knows within seconds. Dean is eating a slice of blueberry pie at the time. Castiel is sitting across the table with a slice of his own that he will not touch and inevitably pass over to Dean. The silent chill washes through the diner and their eyes widen simultaneously. “Damn it, Sammy,” Dean whispers.  
  
Castiel doesn’t say anything. He looks down at his hands, picks up a fork and slowly, but deliberately takes a bite of pie.  
  
 _And so it was_ , Chuck writes,  _Lucifer took Samuel Winchester to be his vessel and that was the end of the world._  
  
He doesn’t tell anyone about his vision and it is the last one he ever has.   
  


***

  
  
The angels leave in a meteor shower, a thousand lights streaking against the last night. The people in their camp think it is a good sign. Thinks team heaven is coming down to save them. Dean finds Castiel standing alone on the hill watching the show.   
  
“Seems like they’re bringing in the cavalry, huh Cas?” Dean says. “You think they found someone else to be their angel condom?”  
  
“They’re leaving,” Castiel says. “It’s becoming harder and harder for me to hear them.”  
  
The cold that had settled into his stomach after Sam drops another few degrees and he can feel his insides turning to ice even as he plasters on a smile. “Good riddance to them. Bunch of dicks. This is our world, we can fight for it ourselves.”  
  
Castiel doesn’t reply, just stares longingly at the lights in the sky.  
  
“You can leave if you want, Cas,” Dean says. “I wouldn’t blame you.”  
  
“Leave?” Castiel repeats like he’d never even considered the idea. “No. No, I think I’ll stay.”  
  


***

  
  
Lucifer whispers in his dreams:  
  
“It is I who resurrected Castiel.” He is wearing Sam’s body casually, almost naturally and even asleep, Dean feels dirty. “If you had not had a companion, you would have been with Sam for a considerably longer period. He would have still said yes, but you would have had years.”  
  
Dean tells himself it doesn’t matter. Tells himself not to listen.  
  
But the words burrow inside him, dry rot in a cracking foundation.  
  


***

  
  
Castiel falls in Iowa. It takes a week. On Monday, he almost bursts a blood vessel exorcising a demon. On Tuesday, he falls asleep for an hour and a half and wakes up in a panic thinking some demon had taken him over. Dean laughs as hard as he did outside ‘the den of inequity’ before Raphael told them God was dead. On Wednesday, he introduces Castiel to the joy of a hot shower and on Thursday, he teaches him how to shoot a gun. Friday is the joys of a cold beer and Saturday is his first ever shave.   
  
“Welcome to the club,” Dean says and slings and arm around his shoulder. “You had no idea what you were missing.”  
  
Castiel grins back at him, wide and true because for the first time in his existence he can feel blood coursing through his veins and the beating of his heart and the flood of emotions and it’s  _real._  
  
It takes him two weeks to realize that wasn’t always a blessing.  
  


***

  
  
Dean calls him Sam on a highway in Arkansas and they both freeze for a moment. Castiel does not correct him and Dean does not apologize. They go about their mission, without another word, moving in-synch because it’s been three years and they can’t help it anymore.  
  
Later that night, Dean finds himself shaking in the Impala. Castiel never felt like a replacement before he was human. Castiel was supposed to be aloof, above him.   
  
Not an equal.   
  
Not someone to depend on.  
  
Not his friend.  
  


***

  
  
“You’re human now,” he tells Castiel in a bar in Boise. “You’re human and you’re in the middle of the fucking apocalypse. When a girl comes up and propositions you, you go for it. Decadence is one of the few perks we have left.”  
  


***

  
  
They find Lucifer in Lawrence. He is wearing a white suit and he still smiles and talks and moves like Sam. He rips three people apart while Dean watches. Dean can’t make himself move against it. Can’t make himself fight against his brother.  
  
“Get the hell out of him,” he growls.  
  
“Your brother invited me here,” Lucifer tells him. “You gave up on him. Just like God gave up on you miserable apes.”  
  


***

  
  
He screams at the sky in November. He’ll take Michael if it means getting back Sam.  
  
No one answers.  
  


***

  
  
The country goes into lockdown in January. There are croat hot zones all over the place and only one in six people out there are still human. He sets up the camp and starts teaching the survivors what he can. They die anyway.  
  


***

  
  
He almost gets to the Colt in Seattle. He knows where it is and who is holding it. He makes the plans to charge in headfirst. Castiel fights against it, calls it a suicide mission but when Dean asks if he’s coming he gives him a crooked smile and says, “Of course.”  
  


***

  
  
They lose fifteen refugees in a fire in Utah and it’s just blind luck that gets Dean back out alive. His throat is scratched raw from smoke inhalation and Chuck scores him a bottle of vicodin to help ease the pain. Castiel watches him down two with curiosity and he tosses the bottle in his direction. “Would probably help you sleep easy.”  
  
“Easy is a good thing?”  
  
“Hell yeah, Cas. Life’s too damn hard these days.”  
  


***

  
  
He goes back for Jo and Ellen in the hot zone. “Leave no man behind,” he’d told Castiel. “We take care of our own.”  
  
They lose three in the mission and Jo starts showing symptoms on their way back. They lose six more because he refuses to see it coming.  
  
He fucks a girl called Sara that night and starts to rewrite his moral code.  
  


***

  
  
Castiel breaks his foot on his way to a training exercise. He’s walking out of one of their cabins and when the step gives, his ankle shatters. “Damnit, Cas,” Dean mutters. “Could you possibly have worse timing?”  
  
His eyes are foggy but his eyes are always foggy now. He starts laughing. “I’m useless,” he says. “Fucking useless. Can’t even walk down a flight of stairs.”  
  
“You made a better angel than human.”  
  
“Thanks, fearless leader,” Cas says. “That means a lot coming from you.”  
  


***

  
  
Bobby dies in April.   
  
Dean is not there. Dean is two states away tracking down a lead on the Colt and Castiel is the one who winds up trying to hold his intestines inside his body.   
  
He makes it back in time for the funeral. Or what passes for a funeral now anyway. He doesn’t remember much from it except that Cas is stoned out of his mind and that the warm hand on his back is the only thing that steadies him.  
  


***

  
  
He starts to torture again in May. It’s the most useful means of getting information and the apocalypse isn’t the time to worry about ethics. There is demon blood on Ruby’s knife and it drips down in gigantic globs, pooling at his feet and he things of Sam and Lilith and cuts just a little deeper.  
  


***

  
  
Dean realizes he hates the sound of Castiel’s laugh in Denver. Realizes that this drugged-out, sexed-up former angel is the signal of everything he’s done wrong in the past year. “You know, I miss the stick up your ass.”  
  
He’s wearing Dean’s jacket and Dean’s amulet and Dean’s empty smile. “Yeah, well I miss the Dean who still agonized about sending people on suicide runs.”  
  
They’re sitting on the roof of the cabin, sharing guard duty for the night but for once it’s quiet.  
  
“You’re welcome to the orgy,” Castiel says. Their knees bump because after all these years he still doesn’t quite understand the concept of personal space. “Might as well enjoy ourselves before the end.”  
  
Dean shakes his head. “What happened to us, man?”  
  
Castiel looks over to meet Deans eyes and he looks more sober then he has in years. “We’re still here, Dean. We might have cracked but we haven’t broken.”  
  


***

  
  
In the end, Dean feels the pressure of his brother’s foot on his cheek, sees himself, the him of five years ago staring on in horror. He thinks of Castiel and Lucifer and heaven and hell. He thinks of five years of letting himself crack--splintering on the edges until he can barely recognize this fractured mosaic in who he used to be.  
  
The foot presses down and finally, finally, Dean feels himself...  
  
break.


End file.
